


A Tear and a Whisper

by Piachichi



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, Childhood, Drama, Family, Gen, Songfic, biography
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-26
Updated: 2013-11-26
Packaged: 2018-01-02 17:53:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1059782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piachichi/pseuds/Piachichi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The sun has turned to black </i>
  <br/>
  <i>And the breath is turning cold</i>
  <br/>
  <i>Can you ever turn back</i>
  <br/>
  <i>To find your soul, find your soul?</i>
</p><p>Nobody noticed and everything went wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Tear and a Whisper

  
_Do you ever whisper_   
_When you're trying to call out my name?_   
_Do you ever fail_   
_When you're trying to hide all your pain?_   


 

* * *

I was always running through life at high speed. What mattered wasn't if I was achieving things, but that I was trying. Trying had always been the most important part of life for me - Was that weird? No. Sometimes I was disappointed and I couldn't help getting angry, but most of the time I was able to accept my mistakes and failures and see them as „tries“. Tries didn't always have to be successful.

Sometimes people told me I was naive and childish, that I had to grow up and think realistic. I think I was more grown up than most of them, grown up enough to seem naive again. I was living through one day after the other, not thinking about the future - Not about what would happen one hour, one year or one decade later. I was only thinking about the current second.

If you never think about the future your life becomes grey and boring. You don't have goals to achieve and you don't have dreams to dream. You don't have a reason to live. I didn't.

I was only ten years old when my way of life betrayed me for the first time. I was just a child and children tend to do things without thinking about them. Normally they don't do it all the time.

It was in Italy. I'm not Italian, but we were on holidays. It was hot and the sun had already burned half of my back because I hadn't thought about applying sun lotion.

Mom and Dad were relaxing at the beach, lying under a big umbrella so they didn't get any sunburns. They weren't watching me and I still don't know if they cared.

My little brothers were playing with the sand next to them. They always did their stuff together, I can't remember them being separated for more than five minutes since the day they were born. Back then I didn't care.

I was sweating, it was hot and I wasn't far from being sick because of the heat when I decided to go swimming for a while. Not that I knew how to swim, so Dad had told me to wait for him. I had waited for nearly two hours and he was still reading.

It was a nice beach with water that only really slowly got deeper. It wasn't dangerous and there were many children even younger than me playing in it.

I slowly approached the water and put my foot in it. It wasn't as cold as I had expected. Well, how could it be cold in that heat?!

I went deeper and deeper, shuddering a little when the cool water met my burnt back. I left the area with the many children, now in between some teenagers playing water ball. Of course I didn't join.

I went deeper and deeper and wondered when it would finally be deep enough to reach my shoulders so I could cool down some more. The ground was soft and my feet sank in a little with every step. The water smelled like the ocean always did, some rotten fish and salt. I couldn't see the ground through the water I  
was standing in. Grinning, I went further.

Now the water reached up to my shoulders and finally it got deeper faster. In front of me were some people paddling in small boats, that was were the area for swimming ended. I wondered if it would get any deeper at all.

Now I had to stand on my toes to be able to breath and the water grew colder. My ears were under water, so I couldn't hear any of the people around me. There weren't many anyway. Most of them stayed in the lower part of the sea.

I reached the place I had to stop. It was exhausting to tiptoe in the water, but I had to. It wasn't easy to balance.

I turned around, stepped forward a little to look at Mom and Dad's umbrella when I slipped into a hole in the ground. It wasn't deep, maybe a few inches, but it was enough for me to lose balance and sink under water. I threw my hands around, but I couldn't figure out where to go. Where was the ground and where was the  
surface? I seemed to sink deeper and deeper instead of swimming back up. I couldn't feel the ground underneath my feet, everything was black and the salt burned so much I had to close my eyes after only a second. I was losing my breath quickly.

I felt my chest tightening and I knew I had to breathe - I wasn't the best at holding my breath for long, anyway. I knew it would be bad to breathe in the water, but after another moment my mouth opened nonetheless and without a chance to resist it, my body took a deep breath, the water filling my mouth, the salt burning as I choked and swallowed even more water. Then everything went black.

 

The next thing I heard were excited voices, sirens, people shouting things and others talking softly. I didn't feel comfortable. Then everything went black again.

  
I woke up in a hospital hours later. Mom, Dad, Lucas and Jonas were sitting on chairs next to me, the twins looking at some picture books, Mom and Dad talking so quietly I couldn't understand a word. Then they looked at me and Mom's eyes widened. Before I could to open my mouth to say something, her hand met my cheek and the pain brought tears to my eyes. Hers looked the same, but I doubted it was because of physical pain.

Lucas looked up when he heard the sound, saw that I was awake and smiled brightly. He tapped Jonas, who turned around and looked at me the same way. Then they returned their attention to the people in their books.

I can't remember ever seeing Dad as mad as he was that day again, but he didn't say a word. I think he was disappointed. In my opinion, it was his own fault for not watching his son at the beach when he knew I had wanted to go swimming for hours. He didn't agree with me when I told him this later.

Mom was furious, though. She didn't hit me again, but she shouted at me and told me how bad and ungrateful I was. I know she was worried, relieved and angry at the same time now. Back then I didn't.

The four of them didn't stay long. Only a few minutes after waking up, Dad took the twins and left. They waved as they always did to greet or say goodbye. I waved back.

Mom stayed a few more minutes, but I could've done without those. She ranted on and on at how bad I was and that I should take my brothers as examples. They were always good boys. Oh, well, I thought - They weren't exactly able to do anything yet!

I left the hospital with Mom, taking a taxi to our hotel and being locked inside our room for the rest of the vacation. I spend three days in that room, only leaving it to eat dinner in the hotel's restaurant every night. The others went sightseeing, shopping and to the swimming pools without me. I was old enough to be left alone for a few hours.

In those three days I had lots of time to think about everything. I was angry, disappointed and maybe a little ashamed of myself. I also wondered who had pulled me out of the water and saved my life, but neither Mom nor Dad answered the question. It may seem funny, but it was only that question that made me uncomfortable when we were on our way back home. Otherwise, I might have just forgotten the whole incident.

Mom and Dad didn't, though. They never again took me along to anywhere with more water than our bathtub. It felt as if they even considered building a shower so I didn't have a chance to drown while I was in the tub. It was frustrating.

Fortunately Jonas and Lucas weren't able to talk yet at that time, so they never told me of their visits in the pool with Mom while Dad was at work and I was in school. They didn't like water anyway. It seemed as if they didn't like doing anything at all, to be honest.

 

When I turned 12 I received the best birthday present in my life - Dad went swimming with me. It was in a nearby lake that wasn't even deep enough to reach my shoulders, but it was great nonetheless. Mom and the twins didn't accompany us. I think it was to keep Dad's attention completely on me, they really didn't  
want to take any risks. I enjoyed a whole Saturday afternoon swimming and playing waterball with Dad, having more fun than I had had in the whole two years before that day.

When we came home Mom awaited us with a nice dinner. Jonas and Lucas had impatiently already started eating, so we quickly joined them and enjoyed my favourite meal - Goulash.

When everyone was ready, Mom took out a cake. It wasn't self made, but I didn't care because it tasted really good. I didn't get any more presents that day, but that was alright.

After we had eaten the cake the twins had to go to bed. They smiled their bright smiles at me and waved happily like they always did to say goodnight. I waved back.

It was always Mom who brought them to bed, they wouldn't let Dad do it. She kissed them on the cheek, pulled the covers over them and put out the lights. Then she closed the door, knocked against it to show that she was still there and joined us in the living room.

Mom and Dad weren't really affectionate people, only slightly with the twins. Maybe they had been like that when I had been smaller, too. I didn't have any rituals and I didn't get a kiss on the cheek or a knock on the door when I went to bed. The best I got was a half-hearted „good night“.

In the end being twelve hadn't changed anything. Swimming was still out of question for me, so I joined a soccer team. It was alright, I wasn't bad either but I had problems with my coordination.

I didn't like running, because it made my head feel swirly and that confused me. I knew how to kick the ball and I scored goals, but I wasn't a fast runner. Fortunately the others didn't care as much as I did. I finally found some friends on the soccer team.

On Christmas that year Mom and Dad gave me a pair of new soccer shoes and my very own soccer ball. It was a real leather ball and I loved it the moment I first looked at it. Jonas and Lucas got bikes, but I had never liked riding a bike. It gave me the same swirly feeling that running did. The twins loved it, though. They drove little circles around the Christmas tree for days and when the Christmas tree was gone,  
they drove circles around the sofa. When the snow had melted, they were finally allowed to bring their bikes outside and from then on, drove circles around Dad's car. Mom was incredibly glad to have the „things“ out of her living room.

I started to love soccer more and more and when it was June and my birthday neared, I asked my parents for an own goal in the garden. Dad asked if I didn't want to go swimming again instead and even if I really wanted the goal, I chose going to the lake. We spent another wonderful day, though it wasn't as hot that time and we had to go home early.

The cake was covered in black and white almond paste and looked like a soccer ball. The twins refused to eat the black pieces, but I didn't care. It tasted just the same.

When summer started and it got really hot, Mom started to go swimming with Jonas and Lucas again. She always did it when I was at school or on weekends when Dad was at home to watch me. I went to soccer practise two times a week, had a game almost every Saturday and on the other days of the week I met  
my friends at the sports ground. Only on Sundays I wasn't allowed to meet the others. Most of the time I spent my Sundays at home being bored, sometimes I played with my soccer ball in the garden, but only when Mom wasn't at home. She hated it.

One day in late September I was in the garden practising my aiming skills. I had painted a small circle on the wall with chalk and kicked the soccer ball against it repeatedly. I was getting better.

Mom was out and had left the twins at home with Dad for a change. She usually always took them with her.

While I was kicking the ball against the wall again and again, harder, faster, then slower and from different angles, I heard the French doors open. They creaked a little. It was Jonas and Lucas of course, who walked towards me and waved as they usually did to greet people. I asked them if they wanted to play with me and Lucas nodded, taking the soccer ball and throwing it in my direction. I told him that he was doing it wrong, pointing at the circle on the wall.

Then I kicked the ball against the wall, completely missing the circle. I shrugged, turned to look at the twins to explain further, when I saw the ball bounce back and fly in Jonas' direction. I shouted at him to watch out, but before I could shove him aside the ball had hit him right in the face. Then it fell to the floor and rolled away. Lucas ran to his brother and took his face in both hands, turned around to me and held them up with wide eyes. They were bloody.

Before I even made up my mind to do anything, I heard Dad shouting the twins' names. His voice got louder and we were still standing still, the twins with scared expressions on their faces. Mine didn't feel any different. Then Dad came out and gave us a puzzling look. Lucas took Jonas' shoulder and turned him around, showing Dad his bleeding nose that was still dripping. Dad jumped, hurried towards them, took Jonas' hand and led him inside. Lucas followed, but I stayed outside and looked at my soccer ball in terror.

Dad hadn't asked any questions as to where Jonas had gotten his bleeding nose, but when Mom came home and saw the twins on the sofa with ice packs (Lucas was holding one, too, maybe so Jonas didn't feel alone) and bloody pullovers, she knew immediately whose fault it was. I was grounded, no soccer practise, no games and no going outside except for school. She also took my ball away and I never found it again.

It seemed as if the twins didn't know why Mom was mad at me, or they just didn't care. I was so mad at the time that I didn't care what they thought at all. I held them responsible for not being able to play soccer. It took Mom almost two months to get over her rage and then the winter had almost begun. Soccer practise was now held inside and it cost more money to go to practise, so she signed me out until spring.

 

Winter became dull and boring, only being able to watch soccer on TV when Mom wasn't at home, which was very rare. The twins hated the snow like they hated everything else, so Dad made me help him free our garden from most of it. They didn't only hate playing in it, they also hated looking at it.

Christmas was nice for everyone besides me. Mom and Dad had saved money all year to buy a new car and they spent Christmas Day driving it to town with the twins. Later I got the most boring presents ever, puzzles mostly. They knew I wasn't patient at all and would probably never finish those.

I left the puzzles under the tree and went to my room with a miniature soccer field, which was the only decent present. It didn't have a ball, but I could just imagine that the players were moving, the imaginary crowd was cheering and my team was scoring one goal after the other.

When I next looked at the Christmas tree, Jonas and Lucas were sitting under it with a half finished soccer puzzle I had left there.

 

It wasn't long until the twins' birthday and spring started. Mom and Dad gave them a whole box full of puzzles with 350 and 500 parts. They called them naturals and geniuses. I wondered if it was normal for geniuses to not be able to say a word on their fifth birthday.

Then my first soccer practise came and even though I had been excited for it all winter, I was left badly disappointed after it. It felt as if I had to relearn everything and the others had learned so much more. After the practise the trainer talked to Dad and must have told him something similar, because Dad said that  
I would be allowed to join the training inside during the next winter. That was motivation enough for me to relearn everything and after a few more weeks, I felt reborn.

While I was outside all day six days a week, our living room floor got plastered with one finished puzzle next to the other. It seemed as if the twins weren't doing anything else all day, except of Sunday. They weren't allowed to puzzle on Sundays, just as I was not allowed to meet friends or play soccer. They never complained, and neither did I.

When Summer started that year, I wished for the goal in the garden again. Mom and Dad didn't respond anything no matter how often I asked. On my birthday morning Dad took me out to the lake, but I didn't really have fun. I wanted to kick the ball, not throw it over the water and I still didn't know how to swim anyway.

We came home with sunburns because Dad had forgotten to put the sun lotion in his bag. I didn't care. Instead of entering through the front door, Dad walked around the house and told me to follow him. We reached our garden gate and he stopped, unlocked it and led me inside. As we walked past the big apple tree, I could see what I had wanted for the last two years - An own goal in the garden, smaller than those on the sports ground but still big enough for me. In front of it on the grass was a brand new soccer ball, not a normal black and white one, but a golden leather ball. I grinned brightly and ran towards it, examining it from every angle, rounding the goal, testing the net and thanking Dad who stood beside me. Then Mom called from inside because the food was getting cold.

She hadn't cooked my favorite meal but the twins' instead. They liked everything they didn't have to chew - Or at least that's what Mom thought, so she had made mashed potatoes with a sauce I couldn't recognize. I didn't complain. Then she brought a cake, not a soccer cake, a normal brown chocolate cake, but it didn't matter to me. It tasted the same, anyway. The twins didn't like it, though, so they got ice cream instead. Mom had always said that they didn't like ice cream because it was so cold, but it seemed as if it they liked it pretty much.

With the beginning of July, Mom started to take the twins out more often again. I never knew what they were doing, but since Lucas and Jonas still hated water I didn't expect swimming. I didn't care, anyway, because I spent my days at the sports ground and my Sundays in the garden. If I was really quiet, I was allowed to play soccer. Almost every week I could make out Jonas and Lucas watching through the curtains. I never asked them to join and they never came outside to join me either.

In August Mom banned all puzzles from the living room after she had slipped on one of them and hurt her knee. The twins had to go to their room to puzzle from then on and that was where they spent most of their days. Mom obviously didn't like it when they isolated themselves, so she always rushed them out to go shopping, eat ice cream or simply take a walk. The twins never complained. Actually, I had yet to hear them say a word.

 

October came and Mom decided that we should celebrate Halloween for the first time in my life, because now the twins were old enough to go trick or treating. They didn't want to put on a costume but Mom made them. They wanted to stay at home and finish they hardest puzzle – 750 parts – but Mom made them go anyway.

They came home with bags full of candy, but they hated candy. Mom said they were right, because candy was really bad for their teeth. It was obvious that she hated them hating it.

I had gone trick or treating, too, with a group of friends. We had gotten a lot of candy and I ate it all in my room because Mom didn't care. She made me brush my teeth after breakfast and dinner, though.

November came and went and soon it was Christmas time again, it got colder and the streets got fuller with people buying their presents. Mom took the twins out to go shopping at least two times a week and they hated it.

Then I heard Mom and Dad talk one night when I wasn't able to sleep and had gone to get a glass of water from the kitchen. They were sitting on the sofa with many, many papers in front of them on the table and Mom looked worried. I couldn't see Dad because he had his back turned to me. Mom ranted about different people that had obviously said bad things about Jonas and Lucas. Dad tried to calm her down and told her that what these people were saying was the truth. Now I knew where Mom had always gone with them when I was outside - doctors. Many different doctors. For the first time in my life, I heard Mom not talking as if the twins were perfect little boys. She said horrible things and Dad said that they couldn't go to a normal school. I stopped listening and returned to my bed without drinking anything.

After that evening, I started really watching my brothers for the first time in my life. They were almost six years old, should normally start school in half a year and I still hadn't heard them say a word even once. They showed what they wanted with hand signs and if someone didn't understand them, they went away  
without trying anything else. They sat on the floor for hours to finish their puzzles for the tenth, twentieth and thirtieth time, they had really weird eating habits – only picking out the carrots in their salad for example and leaving the rest on the plate – and they hated everything. I never saw them laugh, just smile when they approved of something – which was rare.

Christmas wasn't as festive that year as it normally was. The twins didn't get any new puzzles and they hated everything Mom and Dad tried to give them instead, so Mom promised to go to the mall and buy them their puzzles as soon as it opened again. That was okay for them.

I got new soccer shoes and some books I already knew I wasn't going to read. Mom didn't try hard with the food and served salad that only consisted of carrots. The twins refused to eat even one bite of it. I hated carrots and I still do, but I didn't complain.

I loved playing soccer inside almost as much as I loved playing it outside, but it wasn't really the same. I missed the wind in my hair when I tried to run faster and the soft grass under my feet instead of the hard, sticky floor in the gym. My head began hurting and giving me swirly feelings and confusion much faster inside, too, than it normally did.

Mom and Dad still hadn't seen any of my games. I considered myself pretty good and the only problem I had was the running, but it seemed as if nobody noticed that.

 

When spring came, the twins' birthday came, too. Their sixth birthday seemed to have been a deadline for Mom, because she tried everything to make them talk in the few weeks before their birthday. She even tried locking them in separate rooms and ignored their panicked knocking until Dad came home to free them from their prisons. They hadn't screamed, shouted or talked, but after that they refused to let Mom touch them or take them to bed. That was now Dad's task.

In April I had my first drive in Mom and Dad's new car. They normally never took me anywhere they went, but on that day I sat in the back next to Jonas, who sat in the middle between me and Lucas, and watched the trees through the window. It was Sunday and I had no idea where Mom and Dad wanted to take us.

After a long time which must have been hours I seemed to have drifted to sleep because suddenly I was at a beach, then in the ocean and going deeper, deeper and deeper, until the water reached my shoulders and then my chin and then my nose and I still couldn't stop until I was completely under water, everything was black again and my eyes hurt from the salt. I moved my arms around to paddle to the surface, but I felt myself sinking deeper and deeper until I couldn't hold my breath any longer. I felt my mouth forced open, then the water filling my lungs, something hot, a loud CRASH-..

And I was awake. Everywhere around me was smoke, it was hot and I could hear someone screaming terribly loud. Then the door next to me was ripped open, someone loosened my seatbelt and pulled me out of the car. I still heard screaming, but I didn't dare to open my eyes. The salt would hurt and make them tear.

I felt something hit my head hard from behind and everything went black. I was drowning.

 

When I woke up I was in the hospital again. Next to me weren't any chairs and there were no people – not Mom, not Dad, not Jonas, not Lucas. I was completely alone.

I took a deep breath to make sure I was still able to and began coughing hard, because there was something sticking in my throat. Before I could rip it out, someone opened the door, looked at me and hurried to take my hand from the tube. The person pulled it out slowly and put whatever it was away. It was a young woman and I didn't know her, but she smiled kindly and stroked my cheek. I asked where my brothers were. She looked surprised, but nodded slowly and told me that they were in a different room. I asked if they were hurt and she denied. Then I asked what had happened to Mom and Dad.

 

That was the day I grew up. People keep telling me that growing up is a process that stretches over a long time, decades normally, but I feel that this very moment in the hospital was the moment I grew up and didn't allow myself to be a child anymore. That was the moment I first thought about the future, not only  
about the second I was living in.

I wasn't badly hurt in the car accident, only smoke poisoning and some very painful bruises. The twins weren't as lucky, especially Lucas.

I don't know why Mom and Dad never realized that Jonas couldn't hear. He had showed all of the symptoms, every doctor should have seen that he was deaf, but he had developed a perfect method of communication with Lucas, so only Lucas had to be able to hear what others said. Lucas could have learned how to talk and maybe he had even been able to, but I never knew. Lucas didn't survive the accident, just like Mom and Dad. They had all left me alone with Jonas, who had lost all his will to live without Lucas.

Jonas was taken to foster parents, the accident had paralysed his left arm and the lower part of his left leg.

He never learned sign language, he never did a puzzle again and he always sat in the garden of his foster parents' house staring at nothing.

I went to a boarding school and I never touched a soccer ball again, just as I always skipped the swimming lessons when we had them in 9th grade.

I lost all contact to Jonas soon after the accident, but I knew that he couldn't cope with Lucas' death. When I next heard from his foster parents, they told me about my brother's death. I was glad that he was able to be with his twin, Mom and Dad again. They would finally be the family they had never been able to become while I was living with them and I was sure that in heaven, nobody would care if the twins knew how to talk, puzzled all day or only ate the carrots in their salad.

Two months after Jonas' funeral I started playing soccer again.

 

* * *

  
_Despair is still a part of you_   
_And the sky is falling down_   
_Erasing all the memories_   
_Before you hit the ground_   


Malice in Wonderland - A Tear and a Whisper


End file.
